We've seen enough of Extremest political leaders to know that among their peers, cowardice and amoral values are the primary qualification of leadership. In the lead- up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration was an echo chamber of the lies it fabricated to rationalize the going into Iraq at the behest of the oil companies. When Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, reported to the Bush administration that most of the foundation of their threat was false, Scooter Libby, Bush's aide, outed her as a CIA agent destroying her career. Scooter served two years. Our country is still in Iraq at a cost of 4000 American lives and trillions of dollars and counting. What did Obama think he was doing by disclosing the costs of the wars to the taxpayers and placing those costs on the books? Bush, Rice, and Powell were all too cowardly and amoral to say for the sake of their nation that Rumsfeld and Cheny seemed to be making up their rational for war from unreliable sources. We saw the same thing in the House of Representatives during the debt limit/debt reduction fiasco. Against their constituents' wishes and every credible economists recommendation, the Tea Party Caucus stood ready to disembowel America's safety net programs. Reforming them was not a consideration. When confronted with the potential destructiveness of their actions they responded like a drug crazed crack whore on COPS. "I got to kill my baby, so she can go live with Jesus".